I hated driving in Missouri. The roads there are horrible... full of potholes and cracks everywhere. The highway near the seminary I used to attend was so bad people would sometimes swerve wildly to try to avoid some of the seemingly car-sized sinkholes in the road! I don't know what was worse... trying not to hit other cars, or trying not to hit those nasty potholes that seek to destroy front-end alignments. And the signage... oh my goodness, the folks at Missouri DOT ought to be drawn and quartered for their highway-communication ineptness!
But I digress... I only meant to discuss the frustration of potholes (and let's face it, speed bumps suck too)! Driving on an American highway (even in MO) ought not to be eerily reminiscent of a navigating a Humvee down a transport roadway in Iraq - complete with holes blown in the pavement, and life-threatening mines set in place by the enemy. Okay... that's an overstatement, but nevertheless, it ain't too fun driving in Missouri. Sorry MO residents... but you need some seriously better pavement, at least in the Kansas City area! For Western US folks, I think the closest parallel is probably driving in Idaho... yikes!
Anyway... so why did Stephen - undoubtedly knowing he was going to be killed - preach such an in-your-face sermon to the religious elite? What is the point of giving the High Council a lesson on Jewish history... only to (righteously) twist it at the end to drive home the fact they killed the Christ? Why get killed for other people's stupidity and violent nature?
'Cause that's what God wanted from him. Stephen became the first of a long, long line of disciples of Jesus who were martyred for their belief... and for being unapologetically outspoken. Geez... speaking of mine fields... Stephen placed his head right into the jaws of an angry alligator and dared it to clamp down. And it did.
But again... I digress. Why the history lesson? Why the recounting stories of the ancient forefathers such as Abraham, and Moses, and David? What's the point of it all? Was he just showing off his wealth of knowledge... hoping they would be impressed? Was he nervous, and everything just sort of gushed out in a state of panic? Was he out of his mind?
Nah... God was using Stephen to be a human speed bump (giving warning) while simultaneously warning the Jews about all the potholes (revealing sin) along the highway of Judaism.
Much as we hate them, God places speed bumps in our path to protect us from ourselves and from the enemy. But potholes are much worse than speed bumps. Potholes aren't carefully placed for our protection... they're randomly (and depending on the state in which you drive) frequently scattered everywhere along the highway of life. We hate potholes... some are just harmless cracks, but some are frighteningly huge gaping holes in the pavement that can cause severe damage.
God absolutely hates potholes too. In fact, he wants to fill them (permanently)... but far too often we either (a) do nothing... simply trying to avoid the potholes as they continuously get more and more life-threatening. Or, we (b) try to fill the potholes ourselves... using various forms of "religious" activity to try and fill the ever-widening void.
I honestly don't know which is worse, swerving to avoid potholes... even though they continue to grow... or trying to fill them with useless things (like rocks)... getting frustrated at God when they fall out and create a bigger (more dangerous) mess than when we started...
What do you think?
I think without the potholes in life, we would never appreciate the smooth road we normally drive on.
ReplyDelete